CRL in the News

GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- Ask Galen and Alice Henderson about their dream home, and the couple doesn't skip a beat. There would be a finished basement, they say. A two-car garage. A big backyard. And three bedrooms so their children - Zahir, 8, and Jamyah, 13 - don't have to share one. Nothing too fancy, they say, just a place...

A new poll shows that student loan debt and predatory practices by some lenders that make paying loans back increasingly expensive prevents a majority of borrowers in the state from buying a home, a car or paying for necessities, and has spurred as many as one in four to move out of state for better-paying jobs. Female borrowers, those who...

Three months ago, one of the government’s top student loan watchdogs, Seth Frotman, stepped down from his job at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with a scathing resignation letter that criticized the Trump administration for undermining the agency’s enforcement efforts. Then he took some people with him.

The racial wealth gap is the disparity in median household wealth between the different races. Home equity is a large percentage of most families’ wealth. As a result, increasing minority homeownership is critical to closing the gap.

Bank regulators have not come out with a formal plan for updating the Community Reinvestment Act, but a preliminary list of questions about the reform effort issued by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has produced a treasure trove of public feedback to guide their deliberations.

Maxine Waters of California is known as a partisan firebrand who gives as good as she gets, especially where President Trump is concerned. Now, with Democrats assuming control of the House in January, the California Democrat is about to become more visible than ever before, with the power to slow down an important part of Trump's agenda and even shine...

Colorado voters have overwhelmingly opted for tighter regulations on payday lending, easily approving a proposal to cap interest rates on the short-term loans. Colorado is now the 16th state, plus the District of Columbia, to limit loan rates. “APRs of 200% are gone. Huge win for Colorado consumers!” tweeted Danny Katz, the director of the Colorado Public Interest Research Group...

WASHINGTON — Rep. Maxine Waters has been in the headlines recently more as an outspoken critic of the Trump administration than for her banking policy positions on the House Financial Services Committee. That will likely change as Waters is now viewed as the presumptive chair of the committee after Democrats won back control of the House Tuesday. That perch could...

The percentage of South Florida households without a bank account— the so-called unbanked — rose in 2017 even as the national percentage fell last year, a new government survey shows. A full 8 percent of households in the Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach metropolitan area were unbanked, borrowing money or cashing checks outside the banking system, according to...

Meet the new payday loan. It looks a lot like the old payday loan. Under the Obama administration, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau attempted to rein in abusive payday lending, by, among other measures, forcing lenders to ensure borrowers had the means to pay back their loans. The Trump administration, under interim CFPB Director Mick Mulvaney, is looking to roll...